Cause I'm Feeling Bad About Losing Iron Chef

Here's a nice meal I made for my sister before she went to Israel earlier this year:

Broiled Asparagus and Parmesan Sticks with Crema Balsamica



Seared Sesame Crusted Tuna Over a Sesame Cucumber Salad, with Cucumber Ice and Spicy Mayonnaise


Ricotta Gnocci with Tomato Compote and Shaved Parmesan


Deep Fried Hard Boiled Egg Curry with Carrot Air



Melon Caviar with Goat Cheese and Sage


Quatre Quart Cakes under a Pineapple Sorbet and Starfruit Chips with Chocolate Allspice Sugar on a Painted Candy Plate

Iron Chef

We got 4th place. woohoo!!

Our team was Sarah Jeffrey, Arielle Golden, Emily Busch and me.

Here's what we made - sorry no pictures
the secret ingredient was white asparagus

Spicy white asparagus and coconut milk soup
Asparagus paste crusted seared salmon with bok choy and fried asparagus sticks
Asparagus and mint custard in a sweetened rice bowl

I guess we can't win every time...

Short rib technique

Tonight we had short ribs braised in coffee and mulled wine with dried chilies and horseradish cream (horseradish, yogurt, and heavy cream). The sides were roasted green beans and polenta with spinach, toasted hazelnuts, and cheese.

I've braised a lot of short ribs by now, and this is what I've decided:

-cook it in the oven, not on the stove. I did it on the stove this time, because Mark Bittman did it, but it's just not a good idea. It didn't cook evenly enough and the meat was less tender than it would have been if I put it in the oven.

(Sarah: "If Mark Bittman jumped off a bridge, would you?"

Becca: "Probably." )

-if it's in the oven (and it better be), cover the pot with tinfoil, then put the cover on. That will keep the braise from evaporating.

-Three hours minimum. Ideally, I like it 1 hour past the time it takes for the meat to fall off the bone.

My favorite part about short ribs is the fat. I got an extra fatty one that had a half-inch layer of fat wrapped around the meat and it was divine. I wouldn't eat fat by itself, but I like fat and meat together so much that I would have a hard time choosing between perfectly marbled meat and a million dollars.

An ode to dried procinis

I LOVE mushrooms, which is why I hate "mushrooms." I love strong, earthy, mushroom flavor, but the white button mushrooms that are most commonly available at grocery stores are horrible. They don't taste like anything except diluted bleach. 

Dried procinis are great-- they leave behind a beautiful broth of big mushroom flavor when reconstituted. I reconstituted them in broth and half a can of PBR, and made risotto from it. 

Mushroom Tart

I am picky about starches. When we made spanakopita, I was more interested in the fillo dough than the filling. I like the chocolate cookies better than the cream filling in an Oreo. When I was growing up I would often only eat the wonton skins and leave the wontons in the bowl. I never liked pie, but I love pie crusts. What makes one pie better than another for me is the quality of the crust.

All of this is just a long way of saying that I made two tarts: one with a prepared pie crust from weshop, and one with a scratch-made yeasted tart dough. The one with the yeasted tart dough was superior in every way. Since I'm such a starch connoisseur, I should have known. What makes one tart better than another is the crust.

Actually, that's not entirely accurate. There's also the roasted garlic puree in the custard, and chanterelles.

hummus, baba ghanoush, and 96 cookies

The thing is, I'm not really a good cook. Aside from still not reliably being able to chop an onion, I can never do the thing where you take whatever's in the fridge and somehow magically turn it into delicious and interesting dinner. I look at what's in fridge and turn it into scrambled eggs on toast. I'm not good at improvising. What I do, though, is get an idea in my head for a cooking project that renders me unable to think about anything else. My thought process tends to go like this:
Me 1: What can I make for dinner?
Me 2: I dunno, but how about making lime curd instead?
Me 1: Sounds good. Hey...wait a minute! There is still no dinner!
Me 2: So? Lime curd!
Me 1: Fair enough.

The Food
Tonight's project was baba ghanoush, which I've wanted to make for a while, but hadn't connected the dots between the eggplant slowly going bad in our fridge and potential cooking experiments until this week. And since I had a can of chickpeas in the pantry, I extended the thought to hummus.

hummus + sriracha and cayenne pepper = spicy hummus

My dad sent me a bar of nice white chocolate with my last package, which was nice of him. Unfortunately, I'm not a huge white chocolate fan, so eating it straight wasn't really appealing. However, I am a fan of combinations invovling white chocolate and cranberries, so I decided to make white chocolate cranberry oatmeal cookies. This was a good plan until my dyslexic self swapped the measurements of sugar and flour in the batter. Basically, 1 1/2 and 1/2 look very similar when you aren't paying attention (and, in the interest of full disclosure, I may have been cooking a teensy bit under the influence). So, basically I accidentally tripled the amount of sugar in the batter. Oops. I didn't have enough butter to triple the batter (thank God for that), but I did have enough to double it. What I should have done is dump batch one (sugar is cheap) and start over, but instead I just decided to make two batches' worth so that they'd each have about 1.5 times the correct amount of sugar. This is how I spent my entire Friday night baking eight dozen cookies. I know baking is a science, and I was really worried about the structural stability of the cookies, but consistency-wise they came out fine. Definitely sweeter than I'd like, especially the batch with the white chocolate, but on the other hand, if I didn't know I'd added the extra sugar, I don't know that I would have noticed on my own.

The People Who Ate It
No pictures, sorry, but the diners included me and miscellaneous housemates and their friends, and maybe even...you. Seriously, I have hella leftovers (eight dozen cookies, people!). Please help me out here.

Curry Scurry

The Food:
Yum curry yum! Chicken, plus veggies, plus curry equals easy and delicious. Also paneer cheese, which makes me an unlimited amount of happy.
A no-fail one pot wonder! (now we sound like we are advertising it)

The People:
Perfect date night dinner! I dined with the lovely Becca Worby - always a treat!

Shrimp and black beans

Still living off of our Whole Foods purchases, tonight we decided to make shrimp. The only two ingredients we had decided upon were shrimp and black beans, so I challenged us to do something non- Mexican influenced with them. We both went off to our computers to look for other ideas. The majority of the food names we found online were Mexican related, but they just sounded so delicious that we couldn't resist and swung back in that direction.



We cooked the shrimp in one pan with lime zest, and in another mixed together the black beans, a tomato and a green pepper. We then squeezed the lime that we had zested over the top of the completed bowl.


Our shrimp had not been preshelled but I learned that the shrimp shell can be eaten, and also that it contains Chondroitin, an enzyme which is important for joint health. The shell supposedly also helps lower cholesterol levels.

We unfortunately didn't get a picture of the people who at it, who were Sarah, Julia and me.

Basking in the Post-Market Afterglow

The Food:
Selfishly, my favorite thing about the farmers' market is that it exists as a place where I can go buy delicious ingredients for my cooking endeavors. This week I bought some baby arugula, a half round of aged french-farmstyle goat cheese, a nutty gruyere by Cato Corner, baby kale, maple syrup, a baguette by Wave Hill Breads and a porterhouse steak.
Today for lunch with Emily, I tried to incorporate a lot of this local goodness. We had a bistro style lunch: lobster bisque and a baby arugula salad with grated carrot and a slice of fresh gruyere. So the soup obviously wasn't local, but the salad certainly was. The tart arugula took me back to when I was a kid squatting in my mother's vegetable garden and nibbling on her plants. We were also able to enjoy another market treat with the meal: some delicious wave hill bread that we used to dip in our soup!

The People:
Technology failed me today. My camera wasn't charged and Avi's didn't have a memory card. I took a picture of the food with my cell phone camera, but you are going to have to use your imagination to fill in me and Emily eating it!

Ojja Merguez (kinda)

Since coming back from Tunisia I have been trying to find merguez sausages. I wasn't even sure if they were available in the U.S., but when I mentioned them to someone they seemed to think they are somewhat common. I still haven't been able to find any, so until today all of the Ojja I've made has been vegetarian.

Then we went to Whole Foods, and though they didn't have any merguez, they did have some other lamb sausage, which I decided was good enough.


Ojja is this tomato sauce type thing that you eat with a baguette.

Here's what you need
1 onion
2 chopped green peppers
3 fresh chopped tomatoes or 1 can diced tomatoes
2 tbsp. tomato paste - which we forgot to buy today
cumin - put in more than you think you need, cumin is not a spice to use sparingly
merguez or other sausage, or shrimp
harissa - a smoky flavored Tunisian chili paste - you can try something else spicy or forget it all together
2 eggs

Since I had never cooked sausage before I put it in a separate pan until it was cooked through.
In a larger pan saute the onion, then add in the cumin, harissa and tomato paste, followed by the green pepper. After the pepper starts to soften add in the tomatoes and cook it they become more mushy like a tomato sauce. Then add in the sausage - chopped, followed by the 2 eggs. I try to clear off a space in the pan for the eggs to start cooking before mixing them in with the rest of the sauce. Salt and pepper to taste. Eat by scooping up the Ojja with a chunk of baguette.
Serves 3

Lamb sausages are not as close to Tunisian merguez as I would hope, but they definitely get the job done.


And the people who ate it

lamb tenderloin

The Food:
Today was impossibly cold, the kind of day where you try to bury yourself in your jacket as you scurry around campus. I had my hood sinched up tightly and moved from place to place as fast as I could. At the end of my very busy Tuesday I wanted something warm and hearty. You know, the kind of dish that has been bubbling along all afternoon. Unfortunately, I only had 20 minutes....AND the only vegetable in the house was an eggplant - something I had never cooked before. Going without the vegetable was unthinkable; I grew up having a veggie, a carb, and a protein on my plate each night around the table with my mom and brothers. This meant I had a challenge on my hands - a new food and very little time.
Luckily, under Avi's tutelage I have learned to pull my nose out of the cookbook and start cooking creatively. I made up a satisfying recipe on the fly. Sauteeing garlic, eggplant, and diced tomatoes yielded a deliciously hearty sauce.


The sauce was thrown on top of some pastina (adorable star-shaped pastas for those of you who haven't had it). This was then topped with lamb tenderloin. I had this unusual cut of meat for the first time over winter break and found it to be succulent and delicious. I was thrilled when I saw them at Whole Foods! This is definetly a cut to try - very easy to cook and a large payoff.
The People Who Ate It:

Sarah, Xiaoxi, Avi!
The Whole Foods Conquerers

Quick Lunch

Since I sometimes only have an hour for lunch, I have gotten pretty good at 15 minute meals.


This is just some mushrooms, onions, garlic and spinach which I sauteed for a few minutes, and then added the leftover brown rice and barley into the pan with an egg, some soy sauce, salt, pepper, ginger and mustard powder. It was pretty good and I had enough time left over to watch an entire episode of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. Yay!